Going on blogger is akin to walking in a ghost town

I remember when I first made a blog. It was in 2012, year 8, when everyone had one, our blog titles and urls named to reflect subtly our personality as much of possible.

 

You could see how the nature of modern social media affected our style of blogging-most people's posts were short, not really a 'post' in the sense it was simply a three sentence update of what happened in the last period of school that day. An inside joke, one funny period in class, a moment's worth of angst was what I typically came across on my dashboard, which was probably more geared towards a twitter account as opposed to a blog.

 

I'd say my decline in activity was primarily because I had nothing left to say. I'd shared everything I wanted to, and had nothing left to say. My position of anonymity limited what I could post about, lest my family somehow stumble across it and read into my ideas and thoughts, and then identify me from photos, or personal life events I blogged about. Anything recounted about my personal life was done with as distanced a voice as possible. This gave me a relatively 'niche' blog and once the things I wanted to say were said, there wasn't much else to talk about.

 

Whilst there would be longer posts, they were typically a few paragraphs long describing an event of sorts, or a rant. For this reason, my blog got something of a distinction amongst some my friends for having lengthy posts discussing ideas about self-identity, societal problems, the human being as a personality, so on so forth.

 

Scrolling down my dashboard-old blogs-long abandoned, turned to private, closed, scattered like litter on a sidewalk and I do think it's something of a reflection of my generation, arguably the first to have go through teenage years with the 'instant' nature of modern social media. Double tap, like, retweet, swipe left.

 

Elaborating upon the more 'twitter-esque' blogging styles of my schoolmates, I suppose that was what lead to the decline of collective activity amongst my cohort. Blogger is, by design, catered for long posts with detail- as reflected in the amount of different features one can have in a text body- standard bold, italics, hyperlinks and dot points. Your dashboard'll only let you read the first few lines of the post, before you have to click on it, and most people in my generation aren't too used to that on social media. The dashboard/walls/feeds on twitter, Instagram, Facebook and the such allow you to see everything all at once, and can do so because all the content on there is relatively short compared to that blogger is designed for longer posts. I think that utimately did not co operate too well with the 'one glance' nature of social media that the majority of my nation is used to.

 

I also do think the context of most of us at the time would have played a role- we were thirteen and angsty. We had 'issues' (which seemed like the biggest deal at the time) and we wanted to voice them. We wanted friends to know but not the 'entire world' that was facebook. So I suppose blogger provided a decent platform to do so. As we grew and openly laughed (but inwardly cringed) at what we said when we were thirteen or whatnot, we wanted some distance to the past. We had moved on.

Long time no see, to say at the very least

I haven't been here in a while. I guess I was, and still am, pretty focused on tying together my life;  organising health, fitness, studies. It's pretty difficult for me; I've never been one who's had all three aspects of that present simultaneously in life, it's always been "I'm healthy and studying, but unfit, " or "I'm fit and healthy but not studying," or "I'm studying but not fit nor healthy," so on, so forth.

Also the appeal of blogger wore off for a while. At the time, I was less familiar with the keyboard of my new phone. My old phone's keyboard had little left/right arrow keys to easily move between letters to correct the odd spelling mistake. The lack of this feature in my new one meant whenever I realised I spelt something incorrectly a few lines ago, I had to attempt to drag my finger near the exact letter.

The number of times the phone's screen 'cursor' thought I was pointing at a different letter, a few letters away? Frustratingly high. The way Samsung lays out their settings is very, very confusing for someone whose first Android was a Sony-Ericsson. Unnecessarily complicated, I didn't know how to utilise the swype keyboard nor the autofill until much later. So being left without arrow keys for fine corrections or an autofill/swype keyboard made for typing up long, thoughtful blog posts very difficult.

A decent amount of events have occurred in my private life but I guess I haven't written them down. My diary lays in my draw, unmarked for a good half year, similar to this blog.

I should keep up to date. I've missed a good year's worth of memories. Fleeting moments of angst, day to day nuances, what someone said to me on the train-small things like that should be recorded. They're what I experience on a daily basis and I think it is important I record such things, regardless of how trivial they are. It will be, in the future, my only link to the past, other then quickly-fading memories.

I bought my oldest sister a calendar for Christmas

The amount I have to say about my sisters never seems to decrease, does it?

This time I am talking about my oldest sister. My second oldest sister's gotten a lot of thought from me over the past few years and it's only recently that I've given my other sister the same amount and intensity of thought as my second oldest sister.

This is simply because because us two, there is less material to write about. She's never been as involved, had that much of a presence in my life.

In my younger years, she chose to spend more time with my second oldest sister. Not that much time the family, let alone me. Now that I am her age, I understand why she did that-add in some of the factors affecting her personality and the sort of home environment we (she?) grew up in, and I can draw out a complete picture explaining everything.

So I've never harbored the same type of hatred towards her as I did/do my second oldest. How can you hate someone's who's just never done anything to or with you? There's nothing to dislike.

Finally around to the title of this party-for Christmas I bought my sister a calender. It has twelve pictures of adorable puppies in it and my brother and I thought she would've loved it as she is an animal lover and basically has all responsibility for our family dog.

The other day I found it discarded in the small area where she sleeps when she does come back to visit the family, alongside bunched up wrapping paper and the little candy cane my brother bought her.

Hoping she had just forgotten it, I asked her if she was going to use it-if not, I would use it. She replied 'Oh soz. You can use if you want.'

It really upset me... I don't know. I suppose it was just the idea-I bought her something which I thought she'd like and use, and she just... dumped it there.

I suppose it's my yearning for a closer relationship with her-I've been getting closer to my second oldest sister and I was hoping this would've been something of a minor breakthrough. At least we could've talked about it for five minutes. She could've talked to me about different dog breeds. Stuck it in her rooms. Anything.

I'm a little sad.

Hopefully at school this year I'll look big and scary enough to have this sort of relationship with the year sevens

Developing my voice in slam

I find that I haven't fully developed my own voice or style when it comes to slam.  I don't want to simply recite my poem. I want to perform it. Both ends of the spectrum differ greatly from the other. However there is a fine line separating reciting poetry and performing it. I struggle to find it.

The first poem I did was about my sister. It was one big apostrophe as I talked about in an earlier post (link here)

With that poem I did loud, anguished, indignant. Now I'm trying to write a poem on the influence my mother's occasionally erratic and frustrating behaviour on my development and attitude.

I could take the path I took with my old poem-loud, indignant, angry. The idea behind of the poem is similar-the actions of another family member and it's effects on my development throughout the years. It wouldn't (performance-wise) be difficult.

You see, I am a very out there with my emotions and thoughts. Talking about either of them isn't hard. Bringing out strong passionate emotions on either end of the scale and threading those emotions into my words is not difficult. I do it all the time.

However I want to challenge myself. I'm going to try taking a step away from a loud and out there approach. I'm going to try for a subtler take. What emotions will be threaded into my words and how that'll be done-I'm going to try soulful and reflective. I also have to be careful not to victimise myself-that's the easy thing to do. I'm going to try showing firmness and control in my performance; not hurt and victimised.

How it'll be done? That's where it gets hard. So far it's been nothing but difficult actually- I find I cannot bring myself to be calm, firm, reflective and soulful-lest not all at once-without turning the performance into a recital, because I soon start losing the 'subtle underlying, yet still incredibly important' emotions. It's personally difficult to maintain. Subtly with my emotions has never been my thing. 

The nightmare became true

The language of the tour was supposed to be Cantonese

Yet here I am

On a bus

Listening to Mandarin

Waking up at 6am and finding that your running clothes went into the wash a day early so you don't know what to do for one and a half hours

Sheeple Holidaying (pt. 3)

Well, I'm finally up to the part where the name of this/these [originally supposed to be one long] post/s came from.

I initially was incredibly excited about New Zealand. Exploring, discovering, experiencing it's beauty and culture. This was soon to be broken down into mild eagerness as I discovered we were taking a tour.

Sheeple holidaying.

'Sheeple' is a compound word. 'Sheep' and people' combine to make a term describing those who blindly follow with others without questioning or thinking for themselves.

I'm not too happy about the idea of being bundled up in a big bus and being shuttled from place to place. It will not allow for me to explore as far as I want to my satisfaction. What is the point of buying an expensive air ticket to take you to a place which you cannot explore to your satisfaction?

 I protested against the tour, to which my father replied "Well,  how are we going to get around? What if we get lost? "

When I told him that was what the point of public transport was,  and that we spoke fluent English-or at least, I do, he laughed.

"It's not that easy." He replied.

I do not believe him. For the convenience of tourists,  the government surely would've arranged for good public transport to tourist hotspots. I speak fluent English as well- I cannot understand how it can get any easier than that. Extensive planning and research beforehand would've made it so. I am willing to do that.

Yet here I am instead-sheeple travelling in New Zealand.

Sheeple holidaying (pt. 2)

When I was told we were travelling to Cambodia a few months ago,  I was incredibly excited.

Suddenly it was China. I was not excited anymore. China does not interest me from a travelling point of view.  From an economic point of view, yes. Travelling-no. Suddenly those plans got scrapped due to my dad's work change. 

I was fed up with the whole state (or lack) of travelling, and I simply got over my anger in a few hours.

A few days ago,  my parents asked me how I felt about travelling to New Zealand. I have heard New Zealand is a place of great beauty, with its great natural landscape. I eagerly thought of exploring it-trekking in forests,  relaxing in hot springs, walking on its beaches. I asked my friend for travel planning advice. 

Until,  to my horror, I discovered we were going on a tour. I saw the travel tour the dad held was written in Chinese and that did not raise my hopes. At all.

I have only had one travel tour in my life, in 2009. It was a Chinese-speaking tour.  It was in Melbourne. It was terrible.

We were shuttled around from place to place, not given enough time to properly explore. The tour spoke Mandarin, not my dialect. I speak Cantonese and so did a majority of the other passengers. So I did not understand what was going on half the time.

I refuse to believe Melbourne is a boring place. So I believe the tour took us to boring places. For I do not remember a single place or thing I went to or did in Melbourne, except for the Ballarat goldfields. Primarily because their cola was delicious. Add in the language barrier, I was further disconnected with the whole damn tour. Also,  a minor nuance-there were no people my age on the tour. It was all-not even primarily-all middle to old aged Chinese-speaking people.

Due to that tour, I am incredibly afraid this tour will be similar to the Melbourne tour.

Sheeple holidaying (pt. 1)

My family rarely travels. I've been on an aeroplane three times in my sixteen years,  and none of those trips more than a measly three hours to an adjacent state. I haven't gone on a cruise either. I haven't gone overseas at all.

This lack of holidaying has two primary causes: 1. My father is generally always working- we are from the working class- and never chose to take holidays off so he could work more and 2. My mum is very much a homebody. She doesn't like travelling anywhere. Beaches, Blue Mountains,  anywhere- you name it, she'll say she'd rather be home.

In 2010, both of my sisters and my grandmother flew to Cambodia for a month. They attended a wedding and did some sightseeing,  staying with relatives. My mother, the bitch, deemed me too young and irresponsible,  unable to take care of myself without her aid. So there I missed a great travelling opportunity.

We'd have random interstate travelling when the family was younger and no one was intensely preoccupied with exams and education. My father was and is a huge fan of The Blue Mountains,  so we did a lot a trekking there.

Maybe too much. Now I'm sick of the Blue Mountains.  You say Blue Mountains,  I'll think 'not bloody again.'

I'm acutely aware of how selfish this is given the primary circumstance which has made me travel so little-but I'm incredibly angry about it all and wish I could go travelling more. I want to go travelling. See rarely touched places, explore small towns,  wonder in big cities. Expand my thoughts and see how others across the world live. See places. Observe countries.

So excuse me for being selfish, but my youth will only last so long.